Chapter 230 : Chapter 230
Chapter 230
With the Holy Kingdom's entry, the situation became one-sided.
"We wipe out the Underground Magic Tower's main force this time!"
"These creatures crawled out of my domain! Eternal death to the corpses that covet the sunlight!"
"Teach these desecrators of death just how beautiful death truly is!"
The Holy Kingdom was indeed a natural counter to the Underground Magic Tower.
Countless corpses vanished and the earth was purified.
Hundreds of Griffons flew about, striking in every direction.
Anything short of a Sacer-level demon simply dissolved under the shower of Holy Power.
Some of the holy knights even wielded something resembling Aura.
"We can read, you know."
"So you've seen my textbooks."
"Do you have any idea how humiliated the Holy Kingdom's leadership was after you escaped?"
He'd even stolen the Holy Sword and smashed it to pieces.
The holy knights had been left with no choice but to throw themselves into training.
"But......"
Ganemia rested a hand lightly against her cheek and sighed.
'At this rate.'
Cassian raised his sword and spoke to it.
"This time, cut only what needs cutting."
It was as if the sword were alive.
What happened next was even more astonishing.
He swung once, and mana whipped through the air like a storm across a radius of several hundred meters.
An Aura sharper than any blade slaughtered every mage—from those hiding meters underground to those gliding through the sky—without exception.
And yet not a single member of the Holy Kingdom was harmed.
"How is anyone supposed to beat someone like that?"
She felt sorry for the holy knights.
But she pushed past the thought with the characteristically naive optimism of a cleric.
'This, too, must be divine providence—God's way of making the holy knights tougher.'
If the knights heard that, they'd howl about just how much tougher they were expected to become.
When you thought about it, it defied logic.
How could a person get stronger every time you saw him?
It hadn't even been years—just about a month since they'd last met.
And the gulf in strength was absurd.
Last time, she'd thought he was already beyond common sense, but now she couldn't even picture how he'd looked before.
"......What exactly did Yuria save?"
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. Let's move."
Ganemia walked on.
The Underground Tower mages were crawling out with stubborn tenacity.
More precisely, their creatures were crawling stubbornly from beneath the earth.
"GYAAAAAAH!"
It was impossible to know what fraction of the Underground Tower's total strength had been committed.
The visible headcount was roughly two hundred.
But the Underground Tower bought children from Aislard and turned them into mages.
That meant their membership was larger than any other tower's.
"GYAAAH!"
"P-please, spare me! I'm—I'm just—!"
"Show no mercy!"
But no matter how many ants, they couldn't topple a lion.
The Holy Kingdom was formidable, but Cassian was the real problem.
Unlike the earlier battle in the Empire, the mages here had no one to protect them.
"W-where is Red Moon?! Where are they?!"
The occasional operative in a red coat appeared.
SHAAAAK!
A single Aura sweep across the ground and they crumpled.
Intelligence operatives were intelligence operatives at the end of the day.
They might possess combat ability, but overpowering a Sword Master was beyond them.
"......This is cheating. At that level, he could single-handedly take on an entire nation."
One old mage trembled as he muttered.
Not even the dragons of legend could have been this overwhelming.
And yet a single swordsman—
Just one swordsman—
Was singlehandedly holding off sixty percent of the Underground Magic Tower's deployed strength.
Who were they?
The power that had upheld history since before the Empire was the Empire.
The Underground Magic Tower.
One nation?
No—even a small kingdom couldn't manage this.
"Tch. This is why sending hordes of imbeciles accomplishes nothing."
A gloomy voice rolled in from far away, low and flat.
'From far away?'
A voice whispering from that distance—and it came through this clearly?
The old mage turned his head.
Or tried to.
His body wouldn't move.
It felt as if his entire form had been taxidermied.
He wasn't the only one.
"Lord above!"
From the weakest-faith junior holy knights to the monsters—even the demons—
Hung in midair as if bound by invisible cords.
"Cassian, Cassian, Cassian."
He called Cassian's name and walked slowly into view.
His features were generally smooth and slippery.
The outer corners of his eyes drooped, giving him a somewhat wronged look, but a cheerful smile hung there.
A face that looked a bit pitiable—the kind you might mistake for a kindhearted person.
But his energy was more violent than anything else on this battlefield.
"Ban."
Cassian called his name.
A regressor hiding in the Magic Tower.
A mage who'd reached 6th-circle by peering into demonic principles.
One of the strongest beings in this world.
"Avril was truly stupid."
He tapped his small wand against his palm.
"If it were me? I'd never have dismissed your opinions. I'd have told you everything you wanted to hear and done everything you asked."
His sinister gaze swept the area.
The energy flowing from his fingertips pulled tighter.
Everything that had been frozen began to stretch vertically, as if skin were being pulled taut.
People's faces flushed red with agony, looking ready to burst.
"How easy would that have been? You weren't even a regressor—just an instructor at some backwater academy. All anyone had to do was whisper sweet nothings, like a tongue in the mouth."
"GYAAAAH—!"
Several holy knights screamed.
Their powerful Holy Power, ironically, sharpened their minds and amplified the pain.
Their bodies had now narrowed horizontally and stretched to one-and-a-half times their height.
That they hadn't torn apart—that they weren't dead—was baffling.
"He could've strung the students along sweetly too. Rozalin? That woman's head over heels for Cassian—just grab her and threaten. Yuria was a wreck, and the Spear God doesn't care about anything besides fighting."
He drove the wand deep into his own palm like a spike.
Despite clearly piercing through, not a single drop of blood fell.
As if he'd stuck a twig into mud.
"Then he'd have gotten Pan too. Every other brilliant talent as well. So why couldn't Avril make that simple calculation?"
The wand sank smoothly into Ban's palm and disappeared.
FWOOOOONG!
A wind that could not belong to the mortal world surged from the deepest bowels of the earth.
In an instant, every person who'd been stretched vertically vanished.
Where, how—no one knew.
One thing was certain.
— The sacrifice is consummated!
A grotesque entity erupted from the ground.
A massive demon burst from below.
Bat-like wings, sharp fangs, a body burning red.
Sulfurous fire spilled from its mouth with every breath, its tail was long, and its entire body was matted with coarse hair.
Roughly two meters tall.
But the power radiating from that frame far exceeded the General's.
"The real stupidity is this."
Ban slowly backed away.
"Why send weaklings to fight? Just slam the strong one in."
Before his declaration even finished.
The demon crossed the distance at impossible speed and drove a fist at the Saintess.
TAAANG!
By something close to a miracle, Cassian's blade barely—just barely—deflected the demon's fist.
The force was so immense that his sword hand shook.
The first time that had happened since becoming a Sword Master.
"Gkh......"
The energy behind the blow was no joke either; even with Aura up, it felt as though every Mana Road in his body was being rattled apart.
"Huh?"
The Saintess blinked, belatedly realizing she'd nearly died.
Movement far beyond her perception.
"Saintess?!"
A holy knight who'd been rushing to her aid, shouting desperately, was instantly reduced to pulp.
— Fast.
The demon, upon realizing Cassian had blocked its first strike, immediately switched targets.
There was no reason to fixate on Cassian in an open field like this.
— Going to save them all?
Thuds rang out from every direction, one after another, like a single drumbeat.
Holy knights couldn't even summon their vaunted Holy Power before their torsos—or most of their bodies—burst apart and they died.
No pain, no understanding of how they'd been killed.
A painless end was a blessed death, perhaps, but for those watching, it was an utterly despairing sight.
"Form a guard perimeter!"
"Spread Holy Power! Even if it kills you, you must raise your Holy Power!"
The holy knights fought desperately, flooding the area with Holy Power to restrict the demon's movement even slightly.
— Struggle!
The demon spread its wings wide.
They were barely three meters across, yet in an instant the demon's presence swelled to blanket the entire zone.
The Holy Power filling the space scattered.
— KAHAHAHAHAHA!
The demon laughed.
"Whew."
And Ganemia laughed too.
The Holy Power hadn't been meant to stop the demon.
— Kaha—haha?!
The demon's body listed to one side.
More precisely, its upper half slid apart with a hiss of smoke and crumbled to the floor.
"Who the hell are you?"
Rozalin stood behind it, flicking her sword clean.
"You really shouldn't ask a demon who the hell it is."
Pan walked up behind her.
In his hand, Aura blazed in a kaleidoscope of light.
Even after the sword's arc had ended, the blade itself shone with a beautiful radiance.
The stage where a sword ceased to be a mere tool and finally drew breath (αύρα)—gained life.
That was Sword Master.
"How did you get here?"
Cassian could understand Pan having reached Sword Master.
He'd found the beginning; it was a path he'd reach eventually.
But the two of them arriving here, at this timing—that he couldn't understand.
He'd sent everyone away for their assignment.
"Your assignment was to take commissions from nobles within the Belmein Kingdom, wasn't it, Teacher?"
Rozalin grinned.
"So we just seized a commission."
"Seized......?"
"We barged into the nearest domain, asked if they knew of anything dangerous nearby, and sort of...... shook them down until they handed over a commission."
Rozalin laughed as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Cassian's face went blank with disbelief.
In other words, Rozalin had exploited the fact that the exam required receiving a commission—she'd stormed into some random noble's estate and threatened them into saying they had one.
And she'd specifically chosen the domain closest to where Cassian would be fighting, as though she'd known all along.
"I mean, it's not that hard to figure out. Creepy vibes, weird wailing in the area. Found the rumors and followed them right here."
Cassian had made a spectacle of things to lure Avril, Red Moon, and the Underground Magic Tower.
He'd exposed every detail—where he'd be going, who he'd be with.
If the enemy had that information.
Then his allies knew it even better.
"I am his disciple, you know."
Rozalin folded her arms with absolute confidence.
Behind her, Pan folded his arms too, as if to say likewise.
"Ha. Ha."
Cassian let out a helpless laugh.
Ban had already vanished.
In the distance, the storm clouds that had brought the lightning dispersed, and the sun broke through.
The battle was over.
"Thank you, both of you."
And so it was time for evaluation.
"Gratitude aside, using undue force during the course of your assignment is a deduction. Your entire team gets minus ten points."
"What?!"